Tag: opinion

Windows programmers of the C/C++ variety, how many of you realise that since Window 9x Microsoft has been lying to you about what constitutes Unicode? They will have you believe that Unicode requires you to use a WCHAR (wide) character type and that Unicode cannot be represented by a CHAR (narrow) character type. In fact, both of these statements are completely and utterly false. Microsoft has misled you in the most egregious way. Continue reading “When is Unicode not Unicode? When Microsoft gets involved!”→

C is Not C++!!!

A superset of nothing useful

I often hear those who really should know better giving the advice that before you learn to code in C++ you should first learn to code in C. At face value this would seem like reasonable advice; after all C++ is a superset of C and so by learning C you’ll be learning some of C++. Unfortunately, this advice overlooks some fundamental but very important differences between C and C++ that may very well damage the learning curve of the student. Continue reading “Should I learn C before learning C++? Answer – NO!”→

As from Yesterday I am no longer gainfully employed by Last FM. After a lot of soul searching I have decided to move on. This decision was made in part because I feel I’d gone about as far as I could and in part because the vision of the future for the MIR team is one that I couldn’t really see myself being part of.

Passwords. They are ubiquitous. You can’t avoid them. Given all the amazing things that have been invented over the last 50 years or so there is still nothing that looks set to replace the humble password any time soon. Any thing you do online these days requires you to register an account. Often this is just unnecessary and just a way of companies harvesting your details to send you yet more targeted ads (spam!). Of course, registering necessitates yet another password.Continue reading “Is your password salty enough?”→

Why is my bank limiting my Internet Banking password? “It must be between 8 and 12 characters long and can include letters and numbers only.”. This flies in the fact of all best practice when it comes to passwords.

About 7 years ago I decided I wanted to learn a little Spanish. I booked myself into a night class at the local university and spent about 4 months studying on a foundation course. I passed the course with an A grade; not conversational but enough of the basics to get by.

Really starting to get fed up with having to accept cookies on all sites I now visit thanks to EU legislation. Ironically, these are the same cookies I’ve been accepting since the Internet Cookie was conceived.